Lately I’ve been digging through my old art, trying sort out what’s sellable, what’s garbage and what’s just fun to share. This is of the latter category.
A looong, long time ago, I’d endeavoured to rewrite Struwwelpeter (a childhood favourite) for a modern audience. Things to be avoided on pain of terrible consequence would include all forms of disobeying convention, such as doing drugs, self-pleasuring and feminism. Shock-headed Peter himself was a rastaman with an enormous mane of dreads.
Here’s my favourite piece, The Dreadful Passion of Harriet, based on The Dreadful Story of Harriet and the Matches. Enjoy!
[Please click on images to enlarge and hit ‘pause’ to stop the slide show.]
This iconic image was created for The Progressive Magazine’s calendar in 1992 (beautifully designed each year by Patrick JB Flynn). It illustrated this quote by Marge Piercy:
I will choose what enters me, what becomes flesh of my flesh. Without choice, no politics, no ethics lives. I am not your cornfield, not your uranium mine, not your calf for fattening, not your cow for milking. You may not use me as your factory. Priests and legislators do not hold shares in my womb or my mind. This is my body. If I give it to you I want it back. My life is a non-negotiable demand.
Original t-shirts for The Progressive, 1990s
I’m now making this image FREE to use for non-profit, pro-choice organizations to fundraise for supporting women being denied their basic, human rights. Personal use is also fine. Adding/tweaking colour is fine.
The opening image is a high res (300 dpi) jpg. Click on it, pause the slide show, and lift the image onto your desktop.
The image may not be used freely for personal or corporate profit, advertising, or other commercial exploits.
Examples of permissible use (copyright free) :
– pro-choice t-shirts, prints, posters, stickers, etc to fundraise – public mural – tattoo – small run of T-shirts/product for you and your friends – a nice print for yourself or a gift – signs for pro-choice rallies
Any for-profit, commercial use that does not donate the profits to such organizations will still require my permission and a negotiated contract/usage fee, as is usual for re-use of my work – i.e. if you want to use it on an album or book cover and keep the coinage, please contact me to discuss terms.
*Note that the original quote is not included, so please clear with Marge Piercy and/or her publisher for any use other than personal. (Alternatively, one could just put something simple like CHOICE or I WILL CHOOSE, or go wordless).*
The mystery of Medusa’s mythos is so deep, convoluted and extensive, it’s no wonder most people are happy to just accept the classical version : Beautiful, young Medusa is caught in the act – either by or against her will – with Poseidon, in Athena’s temple. Unforgiving Athena turns her to a snake-haired monster so frightful, her gaze can turn men to stone. Solar hero Perseus decapitates her (presumably also putting her out of her misery), en route to rescuing chained Aethiopian princess, Andromeda from the sea-serpent, Cetus. Neither Perseus or any of his incarnations were fond of reptiles, it seems. The myth of Perseus slaying Medusa first comes about in the 7th c BC, when the Greeks were establishing colonies in North Africa, but the Andromeda rescue operation seems to have been added, later.
Athena Polias, from her temple and illustration from a ceramic vessel
Athena had long been a major, scale-clad, snake-wielding Goddess, in her own right. Most Goddesses of any clout had a relation to serpents, for obvious reasons – in antiquity, snakes, who dwelt in the ground, among the rocks and in crevices of temple ruins they ‘protected’ were believed to be the children of Mother Earth. The oldest religion was snake worship.
However, the Olympian, virgin Athena was born motherless and mess-less, from Zeus’ mind, his contractions merely a bad headache. Her power over life and death was based in rational judgement, not the voices of chthonic, belly spirits. Likewise, the Greeks distinguished themselves from the ‘barbarians’*.
Why have you hated me in your councils? For I shall be silent among those who are silent, and I shall appear and speak. Why then have you hated me, you Greeks? Because I am a barbarian among (the) barbarians? For I am the wisdom (of the) Greeks and the knowledge of (the barbarians. I am the judgement of (the) Greeks and the barbarians.
– from The Thunder : Perfect Mind (Nag Hammadi Texts)
First known image of Medusa
At first, Gorgons were not imagined as having a massive wig of writhing serpents. They had some mixed in with their plaits/dreads, plus a pair interlocked as a girdle around their waist. In the first depiction we know of, Medusa is a centaur with no sign of snake hair, but possibly wearing a snake skin/skirt. Medusa appeared on the temples of other deities and the Gorgon face** was an apotropiac, used on buildings, shields, jewelry, etc…or to protect a mystery. Suffice it to say that Medusa is the face of Athena, once you’ve had a few cups of ergot wine.
Minoan ‘eye’ octopus jug, bronze volute krater handle, 500 BC (Taranto), Corinthian alabastron depicting Athena Owl flanked by lions creating a Medusa face/wings, 595-500 BC, Greek hydria with Gorgon face, sphinx and turkeys or vultures
There’s so much more to her tale than ‘meets the eye’, but perhaps more than any other myth, the decapitation and demonization of Medusa, who was likely a Libyan seer-queen, signifies the final and often brutal conversion from Goddess worship to patriarchal religion. Also, the white-washing. For this ‘Orientalist Fantasy’, I drew inspiration from the romanticized face of the ancient Goddess, subject of symbolist painters and goth horror. But the title, like ‘Lilimoth’, harkens back to natural source, the Sun’s too-powerful gaze, which snakes like basking in.
Medusa mosaic, Turkey
Fun fact: The Gorgon also had another three sisters, the Graiae (essentially the Fates), who shared one, prophetic eye and one tooth between them, also taken by Perseus. Interestingly, in the Perseus constellation, Ras al-Ghul or ‘Algol’, the blinking star in Medusa’s severed head and most feared star in the sky, is in fact not just a binary, but a trinary star system. One theory is that two of the Gorgon sisters were immortal and one mortal (Medusa), because of the three day period of Algol’s variation – the star ‘winks’ out on the third day. We’re the ancients aware of three stars dancing around each other, like Fates?
Nazar ‘evil eye’ amulet (detail)
dread; fearfulness, but also (archaic) the emotion aroused by something awe-inspiring (awful) or astonishing, fear of God (Rasta).
astonish; to stun, to render senseless as by a blow, to strike with sudden fear or wonder (from Latin ‘attonare’ – to strike with lightening/’tonare ‘ – to thunder).
North African hairstyles, Theda Vamp and Prudence Hymen as ‘The Gorgon’ 1964
*To Hellenists, a ‘barbarian’ was anyone who didn’t speak Greek, typically from North Africa (the word comes from ‘Berbers’).
**Robert Graves, in The White Goddess, also suggests there was never any Medusa Gorgon, but that the face had always been a mask worn by the Goddess. He claims Perseus takes it to protect what’s in the sack, her magical alphabet.
“During the flush years of the magazine industry in the 1990s, before it began to downsize, Roxanna Bikadoroff was one of the most sought after illustrators in the business. These days her restless imagination takes her work in some new directions — from hard-edged visual messages with maximum impact to soft detailed fabric and bead sculpture drawing on traditional women’s crafts and female mythology. In an interview with Whitney Smith, the artist talks about her background, what motivates her, and her artistic process with nine of her pieces…”
